A School Psychologist's resource for all things tech.

Posts tagged ‘iPhone App’

I have been using Psych Tools regularly since I started using my iPad at school. Despite the app being focused on support school psychologists, one of the reasons it tops my list and is the first one I want to share is the great support behind the app. After using the app for a while I submitted feedback to the app developer and we engaged in a dialogue about what I liked and didn’t like about the app. Many of my suggestions were ones they were working on but others were features they hadn’t yet thought about. This back and forth is certainly the type of responsiveness I hope every app developer will have, but I know it isn’t reality. So because of their responsiveness, the app is one of my favorites.

Pros:

Simply stated, it’s an app made for School Psychologists. This fact alone makes this app better than others apps to support our day-to-day work. Features include multiple observation methods (event recording, duration recording, interval recording, and ABC recording), observation reports, student list, evaluation time-line/to-do list, stopwatch, age calculator, and normal distribution chart. The observation tools come pre-loaded with several standard behaviors but additional behaviors can easily be added. If you have a standard template for completing observations you’re able to set-up your own observation templates. Knowing what observation tool to use for your observation takes a little getting used to but after several observation sessions you’ll have no problem knowing how to setup the observation in the app to meet your observation needs. A great feature for the app is the ability to create reports from single or multiple observations for an individual student. While the reports are basic you are able to print (if you have the capability) or email the report to yourself to be inserted in to your report. As for the evaluation tracking and task lists, if you’re like me, you might not always remember to create your evaluation task list on the day the consent to evaluate is signed. The app calculates the evaluation due date based on when the “Obtain Consent” item is completed but you are able to manually change the due date for the “Complete Evaluation” task. There are task lists already created for evaluations and re-evaluations but you’re able to modify these lists to add additional items specific to the student or to all of your comprehensive evaluations and save your “regular” tasks to your own evaluation template. To-do lists are also available for Interventions.

Cons:

The app is not individually password protected. You can always password protect you’re entireiPad/iPhone but you can’t password protect this specific app. The app is actually an iPhone app but you’re able to load and view it on an iPad however images get slightly distorted between the two platforms. You also are not able to switch between portrait and landscape. The age calculator is great if you’re using it on the day you want to calculate from however if you want to calculate a student’s age several days after you completed the evaluation you’re not able to change your target day, it is set to the current date (see PAR toolkit for app that allows you to change the target date). While there are several observation options in order to add narrative information you must pause the observation and add a note. An improvement suggestion has been made to split the screen in order to record narrative notes while still gathering duration or frequency behavior data. I’d also like to see a feature where you can make a student inactive after they have left your building or cases when the student is doing so well you’re not long supporting the student. I have provided suggestions to resolve these “cons” to the app developers and they have been very receptive and indicated that many of my suggestions were already on their list of things to work on. With app developers as responsive as they are, this app will only get better.

If you’ve been using Psych Tools, what do you like about it? What features do you wish it had? Are there creative ways you’ve found to use that app to overcome some the apps weaknesses?